Chapter 1738 — The Hunter of the Seventeenth Epoch

Beneath the World Tree, surge after surge of throbbing pulses came, urgent and violent; Shen Mu sensed them from far off, and his heart slowly sank. From the fluctuations of those divine abilities he could tell which belonged to Xu Shenghua and which to Lingguan.

Lingguan's two ancient-god clones were now closing in on Xu Shenghua with a strange art of joint slaughter: the two ancient gods at times merged into one and at times parted again, and the great Daos the two commanded were not the same — yet each man's Dao was a Dao attuned to the Dao Flower and the Dao Fruit. To break Great Black Mountain, the Hall Master Lingguan had truly spared no pains!

He had attained the Dao four times in all, bearing three Dao Fruits and opening one Dao Flower. Shen Mu had destroyed one of them before, and just now another had been spent to block Shen Mu's way and was likewise destroyed. With the one Dao Fruit and one Dao Flower that remained, the clones he had chosen were matched to the Daos stored within them, and so could unleash their utmost power. The strength of those two clones must be infinitely close to that of a Dao Achiever!

"Xu Shenghua, you must not die.

. . " Shen Mu strove to quicken his steps, yet his steps only grew heavier and heavier. In that last battle his mana had been drained dry, and his body had long since reached its limit; his legs seemed not his own, and his frame seemed to bear all the heavens and myriad worlds as he struggled onward.

To race without pause, to cross battlefield after battlefield in the shortest span, to cut down the Hall Master Lingguan's ancient-god clones amid a chaotic host at the least cost and the greatest speed — that too was an unimaginable challenge for him.

His great battle in the Lingguan Treasure Hall had already overdrawn him gravely, his vital essence spent; Lingguan's clones could now even wound him in the flesh.

The pulses of divine ability from Great Black Mountain still came, and came more urgently than before — plainly, Xu Shenghua's great battle against Lingguan's two clones had reached its most critical hour. Shen Mu's figure still flew like wind and lightning, yet he staggered as he went, slower now than before by a measure he could not reckon. Then he sensed something amiss in the fluctuations.

Shen Mu lifted his head and looked toward Great Black Mountain ahead. There, another World Tree was rising slowly — Xu Shenghua's World Tree. In the year the World Tree was reborn, Xu Shenghua and Lan Yutian had sat beneath it, trying to parse the Dao hidden within the World Tree, treating the World Tree itself as a realm.

Shen Mu had meditated beside them, but comprehended nothing; so he had thought of a trick, borrowed the divine axe from Tai Yi, felled the World Tree, and transplanted it into his own divine treasury. Later, when a new tree grew, Lan Yutian and Xu Shenghua still sat beneath it, tirelessly trying to deconstruct the World Tree.

By the look of it now, Xu Shenghua had accomplished something over these years. "The thirty-third heaven of the Dao Realm.

.

.

" Shen Mu did not halt his steps; the vertical eye at his brow opened. Xu Shenghua's Dao Realm was joined to his World Tree, and that set his mind somewhat at ease.

Xu Shenghua was now, so to speak, half a Dao Achiever. He and Lan Yutian had created a new cultivation system for the future, and now that system was nearly complete.

What he and Lan Yutian had chosen was a shortcut. The traditional cultivation systems — whether the Heavenly Palace and Heavenly Court system or the Dao Realm system — were all accumulations of quantitative change.

Even to cultivate a perfect Heavenly Court, one must imprint the Ultimate Void before attaining qualitative change; even to complete the thirty-six heavens of the Dao Realm, one must go to the Ultimate Void and imprint one's own Dao. But the system of Xu Shenghua and Lan Yutian fused the Dao Realm system with the World Tree, the World Tree standing as one's own Dao Tree.

Once a wielder of divine abilities completed the Five Tai Realms and began condensing a World Tree, he had in effect stepped into the realm of the Dao Achievers; each further layer of the Dao Realm brought him one step closer to a perfect Dao Achiever.

The advantage of this method was that it broke qualitative change apart into quantitative change, distributed across every layer of the Dao Realm.

"Xu Shenghua's strength is not far from that of a single Lingguan clone, but two Lingguan clones working in concert with the Dao Flower and Dao Fruit far surpass him. The only thing he can rely on is his divine abilities.

" Shen Mu drew closer and closer to Black Mountain; the divine abilities issuing from it had grown dense to the utmost, and came from different directions, so the three of them must be moving at extreme speed. "Xu Shenghua's strength lies in growing stronger against the strong; his mind is too nimble, and in battle he can always devise a counter to his opponent's divine abilities and Dao arts.

But there is a precondition — whether his store of knowledge is enough to contend with Lingguan! " If his store of knowledge could not stand against Lingguan's, then no matter how clever he was, he would lose.

Lingguan's store of knowledge came from the past four cosmic epochs, and from the Miluo Palace! The Miluo Palace might be called the most glorious and most colossal holy land of the sixteen cosmic epochs, and the supreme holy land besides.

Though it was impossible for Lingguan to have learned every last remnant of the Miluo Palace's depths, that was no small thing either; that this Hall Master could encompass nearly all the ancient gods within his own flesh showed that his attainments in these innate Daos were terrifying. For Xu Shenghua to surpass him in store of knowledge was all but impossible.

Shen Mu rushed into Great Black Mountain. Its expanse was vast; he climbed to a peak and looked out, and saw mountain after mountain split open — an unimaginably vicious battle had been fought here, splitting the peaks asunder.

Suddenly the fluctuations of divine ability subsided.

Shen Mu's heart sank. Dragging his weary body, he struggled toward the place where the last fluctuation had come from, staggering as he went — and just then he suddenly saw, at the foot of one of the black mountains, several grave mounds, with stone markers standing before them.

Shen Mu was briefly startled. He opened his vertical eye, barely able to rouse it, and peered into the interior of the graves. His face showed astonishment, then broke into a smile. "That fellow Xu Shenghua — I thought he would never rob the store he was set to guard. . .

In store of knowledge, Lingguan may well be the lesser of the two!

" He looked toward the other black mountains and saw grave after grave and stone marker after stone marker.

The number of graves here somewhat exceeded Shen Mu's expectations. He slowed his steps and went on.

Among the prehistoric powerhouses who had stowed away through the World Tree, few were Dao Achievers; a great part of the Dao Achievers were gathered in Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court, a holy land of Dao Achievers where Dao Trees grew in forests. And most of the prehistoric powerhouses who chose to stow away through the World Tree had no fate to attain the Dao and no right to enter Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court; so if they wished to live, the World Tree was their only road. In that year, because of the death of the Lame Old Man, Shen Mu in a fury had gone deep into the mineral veins of Great Black Mountain in a single night and cut down more than a hundred prehistoric powerhouses in succession.

Xu Shenghua had surely not won such merit in one night; rather, he had done the like every day for these thirty-odd years.